Anita Donderer

* 1939

  • “First we came to one village, I remember that, it was terrible, they transported us in an old cargo train. They dumped us into the village dancing hall with nothing at all, no food, and obviously no milk or anything for the little one. Then my aunt, my mother’s second sister, went from house to house with my mother, wanting to beg for milk. Everyone turned them out. Of course: ‘You shouted Hitler, and now you have it, so no milk for you!’ Then they came to the middle of the village, where the big farms were. They didn’t even dare enter because they thought that the yard was so big that they would certainly not get anything there. That it was no doubt the home of wealthy farm-owners. And then... There was a lime tree growing in the middle, they stood there and burst into tears. But then a woman came out of that large farm, she was such a little, really very old farmer’s wife. She came and asked both of the young women – my mother was about 28, my aunt was a few years older – why they were crying. They replied that they had with them an infant without its mother, three months old, which was crying because it had no milk. After that, they were allowed to come to the farm every day to get some milk. That was, of course... and by chance, as chance would have it, when the families were being assigned to various homes, my grandparents were sent to that farm.”

  • “Well, and then the resettlement started, of course. We found ourselves in the camp in Nejdek, and then I remember that the little one lay in the pushchair – Mum and Dad wanted to take the pushchair with them for the four-year-old [sic]. With the idea that when the little grew up a bit, he would be able to sit in it. But they didn’t allow it, my father had to take the pushchair back to the collection point, and the train left for Wiesau.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Rehau, 15.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 49:15
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the expelled Germans born in the Karlovy Vary region
  • 2

    Rehau, 15.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:34:30
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the expelled Germans born in the Karlovy Vary region
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I had to be grown up

Anita Donderer in 2019
Anita Donderer in 2019
zdroj: Rehau

Anita Donderer was born on 14 October 1939 into a German family. She grew up in Nejdek, a town in the Ore Mountains. In June 1946 she and all her family including her grandparents were forcibly deported to Germany along with other Sudeten Germans. Besides Anita, her parents also looked after her two cousins, a girl and a boy, as their mother, Anita’s aunt, had died and their father was in the army. They lived in Bavaria, initially in a village near Würzburg, Obernbach near Aichach, before moving to Augsburg. After completing a monastic school and a real school, Anita Donderer found employment at a renowned gentlemen’s outfitter in Augsburg, where she worked a whole 40 years until her retirement. She married in Bavaria. She revisited Nejdek for the first time in 1986. In the 1990s she became actively engaged in Sudeten German affairs and initiated many Czech-German meetings of citizens both within and without the municipal partnership of Nejdek and Augsburg. She helped renovate the historical Stations of the Cross in Nejdek and co-organised reconciliatory football tournaments and other civic events.